


To Sink

by Askance



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Implied Relationships, Season/Series 07, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-27
Updated: 2012-01-27
Packaged: 2017-10-30 05:30:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/328245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Askance/pseuds/Askance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He tries drowning on for size.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Sink

 

He tries drowning on for size.

 

Somehow they made it to a coastline, though if you asked him Dean would never be able to tell you what state, what side. Washington or South Carolina, Florida or Oregon. He doesn't know where Sam is, not right now, but he hopes it's somewhere safe, and he hopes he's got plenty of books to keep him busy, plenty of places to lose his tired mind. Above all, he just wants Sammy to be okay.

 

And he's on the beach, not really sure why, not really sure of anything anymore. He left his boots in the car because the sand looks cool and inviting, and there's a storm bubbling up on the very distant horizon, little pinprick lightning flickers, but people are still milling softly on the edges of the beach. There's some kind of bar a little ways off, but his part of the sand is clear, and for all intents and purposes he is alone.

 

The breeze smells like salt and it's purer than any Dean's breathed in a long time. So he walks a little ways, down toward the water, looking up at the sky, feeling dazed and distant. Feather clouds. They're an odd sort of blue-white, pale and shadowed, and they curl over themselves like waves. Pulling the storm in close, kicking up the wind, tossing the unbuttoned hems of Dean's shirt.

 

So he walks a little further toward where the water is churning, soft at first but a little rougher now. He thinks about undercurrents. The wind's pulling the storm in close and drawing him into itself, as compensation, as revenge.

 

There's a boat tipping and drifting far away under the boiling of the storm, but it's not here yet. The lightning and the veil of rain are taking their sweet time and for now the beach is calm, pawed at by the water.

 

Dean can't help but notice how small that boat is, one white sail, tip and drift. He wonders how small he would be, way out there on the horizon. Smaller than a pinprick. An insect. Small and far away, and safe.

 

And then, inevitably, he thinks about another water. Another body walking like this, stumbling and arms outstretched as if to be embraced, baptised; another pair of eyes fixed on the sky as if breathing it. The gentle way that body had gone under, as if tugged down by the kindest of monsters. Slipped away like the air at the end of a breath. Nothing left but a coat, bloodied and torn and soaked, hidden away in a back corner of the Impala's trunk under guns and rosaries and holy water, and Sam knew it was there but he never said anything when Dean stopped and stared at it, only fixed him with that gentlest look of sympathy and love that always hovered on Sam's face, these days. _I've got it bad but you've got it so much worse_. A lie, but if it made him happy...

 

The water is at Dean's ankles now. It's cold, numbingly cold, and the sand is sucked away under his feet, leaving muddy hollows before the water comes back in again, but he convinces himself he can't feel it.

 

The sail on that boat looks like a wing. Just one, outstretched towards the fuming sky.

 

Vaguely Dean wonders if there's something he's forgotten to do. 

 

He walks. Like Moses into the parted Sea he walks, though this sea isn't parting, not for him. He gave up his claim to holiness a long time ago. And he is very calm, and he wonders if maybe this is what Cas felt like, crouched down inside himself as those monsters led him like a frightened child into the water. 

 

Was he tired like this? Did he see death coming up to meet him in the cold and the dark and smile a little bit, because finally he'd be able to rest? Did he think of Dean while the water closed in and stifled him, and hold his face while he flickered out at last?

 

Just a little further. Just a little deeper. The water swirls around his waist and the storm is coming in.

 

In the blur of his tears that sail looks  _just_ like a wing.

 

The water is cold, so cold, blue and icy, tugging patiently at his body as if welcoming him home. If he can just get to that point on the horizon—if he can just get to that magic spot where the world will dissolve and blue eyes will smile at him from the center of the storm—if he can just reach that place, he'll be okay, he knows it.

 

Otherwise he'll just die a different way. Tomorrow, next week, ten years from now, and so much more tired than he is today.

 

“Cas?” he says, perhaps out loud, or perhaps not at all. He says it for no other reason than to feel like he isn't alone with the sand falling out from under his feet. The water is at his chest.

 

And he walks until the beach floor becomes just a brushing of his feet, and then he lets himself sink.

 

It is very quiet under the waves. There is a distant roar of water milling at the shore, a distant vibration of thunder. He lets bubbles leave his mouth in roiling streams and opens his eyes even though they sting. He looks for dark hair, for bright eyes. The shadows of wings trailing along the ocean floor.

 

He doesn't see him. He closes his eyes. He isn't sure what he's waiting for.

 

 ***

 

_He is glad, at least, that Jimmy will be free. There are pieces of him still clinging on in the dark parts of the body's mind, and he's hurt, and he's stubborn. Castiel hopes that once this is over, he'll go home. If any man deserves peace, it is Jimmy._

 

_Castiel is very weak, and he sees the water, grey and still, coming up to meet him. He knows that under that water, he'll be free, too. It isn't a freedom he wants, but he is so, so tired. He is astonished, constantly, that he's made it this long. He feels as if he has been running for years, chasing ghosts, chasing dreams. He is grateful for the ache in the bones he has stolen, but he wants, just for a little while, to be still._

 

_He can't fight, but he is still frightened, and so he thinks of Dean, because Dean's face is the greatest comfort he has ever known._

 

_He imagines Dean talking to him. Something mundane. He closes what eyes he has left to listen._

 

_“You wanna come with? Sam's doing his thing and he'll just throw a bitch-fit if I ask him, and it's a long drive into town. Passenger seat could use a passenger...”_

 

_As best he can he conjures that passenger seat, the old upholstery and the battered tape deck, the slow and easy smile Dean wears when he drives. And now Dean's talking about something else inane, women or music or the little things about Sam that drive him crazy but hell if he doesn't love the guy..._

 

_Castiel drowns watching Dean Winchester talk about nothing, smiling slow, and so he drowns at peace._

 

_Jimmy goes home, but he clings to Castiel for as long as he possibly can. And before he lets go, he whispers, “Thank you.”_

 

 ***

 

Maybe it's the cold, or the push and pull of the water, that bears Dean back up into the air. His head breaks the surface and he panics, gasping at the wind, body suddenly alive and kicking upward. All the calm is gone. The storm is howling in and the waves are mounting, shunting him back toward the shore, and the sailboat is nowhere to be seen. 

 

Dean is left on the beach by a hurtling curl of water and he lands there sputtering, shivering. The sand is empty. The grass at the top of the dunes is whirling in the wind.

 

Cold to the bone Dean gets to his feet, clothes paper-thin against his body. He goes back to Sam, who sees the emptiness and fear behind his brother's eyes and pulls him into the shower, trying desperately to warm him up. The mirror in the motel bathroom fogs up in instants and Sam waits outside the door, head down, and tries not to listen to Dean sobbing against the linoleum wall.

 

And Sam could swear he feels a hand on his shoulder, just once, a few moments before Dean stops crying in there. A passing ghost. Whatever it is, it leaves the room feeling calmer and darker, and when Dean comes out he hugs Sam so tightly it almost hurts.

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
